


Festina Lente

by paperiuni



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Action, Canon-Typical Violence, Comrades in Arms, Developing Relationship, Drama, Flirting, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One M-Rated Sex Scene, Other Chapters Are T, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-23
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-03-14 20:17:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3424187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, five times Dorian Pavus and Iron Bull hastened slowly. Scenes from a love story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tools of the Trade

**Author's Note:**

> All blame goes to Joan, who made me post this.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You're not holding a pen," Bull says. "Give me your hand."
> 
> "What?" Dorian's fists tighten, reflexively.

The whetstone slips from his fingers for the third time and clatters off into the grass. Dorian swears with a kind of precise abandon. He's got as far as taking his staff to pieces: unscrewed the focusing crystals, cleaned the steel rivets at either end, slid out the pin that fastens the two-pronged, perpendicular blade to the butt of the whitewood haft.

He's just about to give up what remains of his dignity and crouch down to search for the whetstone, when a shadow falls across the late sunlight.

"Trouble, 'Vint?" Iron Bull tosses his missing whetstone into the air, catches it again.

"I fail to see how that's any of your business, _Qunari_." He bites off the word. They are back at camp early: at the end of their latest skirmish with the local wildlife, Sera discovered a row of blight wolf teeth in her arm. The Inquisitor is with her now, trying to persuade her that the mage healer will do a much swifter job of mending the bite than salves and bandages.

The lull also scattered the rest of them to whatever busywork they could scrounge up. Dorian thought he'd chosen a discreet spot for the emerging issue that his kit will not take care of itself.

"Doesn't look like you've used this much." Bull holds the stone up to the light.

"Yes, yes." Dorian barely refrains from rolling his eyes. "I am quite new to all the charms of the roaming life. Sleeping in ditches, wearing the same clothes for a week straight..."

"Not having someone to polish your staff for you." The words rumble in Bull's throat, rounded with amusement.

"Or that." Dorian sighs. Bull is keeping a span of two paces between them, and he isn't quite sure if the distance is meant to irritate or to unruffle him. Tevinter and Qunari--by every preconception, they should hardly associate, let alone fight side by side. The Inquisition seems to make for strange bedfellows all around. "As a rule, the sons of magisters..." He doesn't bother to finish. "May I have that back?"

For a moment he braces to have his grudging request rebuffed. Instead, Bull squats down on a rock across from where Dorian has spread his staff parts. Without asking, he picks up the staff blade. A faint blossoming of rust mars the sharpened edge. Dorian's had to trip a few assailants with it to buy time to conjure a handful of fire or frost and finish them off.

"You're not holding a pen," Bull says. "Give me your hand."

"What?" Dorian's fists tighten, reflexively.

"If I want to bite at your fingers, I'll ask first." While Dorian smothers a most untimely mental image at _that_ , Bull goes on, "Your grip's all wrong for this work. Give me your hand."

He watches his own fingers unfurl and linger in the space between them. His hands are not small, long-boned and deft with years of practicing exacting ritual gestures, but Bull's fingers curled around his make them seem delicate. There is an unbidden weight to the moment. In essence, Dorian has surrendered an important tool of his trade--one more crucial than the staff--to a man who could crush his hand with a strong enough squeeze.

Bull presses the whetstone into his palm, fits it in his grasp, and demonstrates a slow, smooth stroke along the edge of the blade.

"You handle it like you think you're going to cut yourself."

Dorian would say something snappy about the blade being rather _sharp_. He huffs genteelly instead, but doesn't withdraw his hand.

"Firm grip, and bend at the wrist." Bull works him through the movement a few more times, then lets go unasked. "Nice and easy."

"I am not some dim-witted--" Dorian draws a harsh breath. Then, purposefully, he meets Bull's eye. Despite the crooked cant of his mouth, Bull's expression is not unkind. This might be the first time Dorian has considered Bull's face in any detail--looked at him properly at all. Bull looks back, returning Dorian's scrutiny in equal measure, and the discomfort that he expects elects not to manifest.

"Well. Neither should I be an uncouth rube. Thank you."

Bull's one eye narrows in fleeting thought. "Won't be on my head, then, if your staff breaks and we all die because you're not shoring up our barriers." He stands, shifting his weight to the right to spare his stiff, braced leg, and leaves Dorian to his tentative work.


	2. On the Shore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Feeling calmer?" Dorian's voice hovers above him. "Shall I knock you on the head with my staff to make sure?" The lack of _you brutish oaf_ or _bloody Qunari_ divulges his anger--and anxiety--more clearly than a barrage of insults would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh, so, this escalated quickly.
> 
> This was supposed to be a bit of subtexty chilling out on the Storm Coast. It didn't quite go as planned.
> 
> I tried to strike a balance between good narration and honouring game mechanics in the action--hope that it works.

Varric's repeating crossbow makes a hard, distinctive _snick_ off to Bull's left. The jangle of a heavily armoured fighter staggering snags his attention. The Red Templar that tried to close in on his blind side is swearing, hoarse, breathless rasps of agony. Swinging roughly, Bull cleaves her wooden shield in two. She spins with the force of the blow, exposing her upper body, and with a crunch of bone he drops her into a groaning heap.

That immediate threat down, he takes a sweep of his surroundings. Varric 's clambered atop a rock, ducking down to reload and picking off the archers crouched on the rain-misted slope. They found no way to approach the rogue templar encampment, save for a path between a steep ridge scattered with spindly trees, and the churning sea. The Inquisitor took Cole with her to try and circle uphill behind the archers while the rest of them played the bait. That was all well and good, but now there's no sign of either the boss or the kid.

Bull almost dares to take his good eye off the slope. All looks quiet.

Then a deformed figure, hunched underneath the growths of red lyrium jutting from a once human body, breaks from a tangled group of trees. It sprints towards them, showering sand into the air with each step.

"Shit." Varric slots another case of bolts into Bianca's stock. "Sparkler?"

"A moment," comes Dorian's voice from behind the same outcropping Varric is using for cover. 

"Make it a short one," Bull warns. He hefts the axe in his hands. The behemoth looms even above his own height. He'll need a closer look before he knows how best to shatter the lyrium striated throughout its bulk.

"Now!" Dorian reaches around the sheltering rock. The ground lights with a cold, glittering glyph mere paces in front of the charging behemoth. Bull would already be toe to toe with it, but he's worked with Dalish for long enough. A mage tells you to wait, you stick to your footings.

The creature crosses the glyph. Shafts of ice shear up from the ground like the snapping jaws of a dragon. One plunges into its lyrium-plated middle with a terrible grinding, and Bull strides forward. From ahead, arrows begin whisking down towards their position.

At once a surge in the air like a cool mist falling wraps around him. Recognising Dorian's barrier spell, he doesn't even slow down. It'll deflect the worst of the bolts while he's out in the open. Varric and Bianca return fire, his quicker rate of fire matched by the numbers of the second band of archers.

The behemoth dives straight at Bull--the lyrium addles every shred of strategy out of them until they're little more than living weapons directed by a killing instinct. He sets his weight on his back foot and swerves just as the monster makes to grapple him. Using the riveted butt of his axe as a bludgeon, he cracks off a long shrapnel of lyrium. There's flesh beneath somewhere.

"More on the slope!" Varric yells. Bull lodges that away: he can't afford distractions. The behemoth spins on him. Ducking away, he pounds away another chunk of its plating. Dorian calls out, and enchanted ice crackles up into a jagged wall between them and the approaching reinforcements.

Bull overbalances on a swing, the weight of the axe carrying him through a half-circle. The behemoth crashes into him. Its lyrium talons rake through his piecemeal armour and gouge into his back. He drops his knees to the ground, grabs onto a thick, fractured spike on its shoulder and hauls. A grunt spills from him as he heaves the creature over himself and forcefully into the sand.

The acrid stink of Varric's smoke grenades scrapes his nose, and armour rattles far too close. The Inquisitor had better hurry it up. The foot soldiers will reach Varric and Dorian while Bull is stuck grappling with the behemoth. As it founders, he willfully pulls on the pain of his fresh injury.

Some warriors trust their battle rush to bear them through the agony. He was taught another way. The pain itself can be a course to victory.

Knowing full well that the swing will quicken his bleeding, he smashes into the behemoth's back. Lyrium shatters, and blood, scarlet and abundant, sluices in its wake. The rest of the battle fades into the background as his focus contracts. The behemoth rears before he can deliver a decisive blow, howling at a bone-jarring pitch. A whiff of something funereal, ash and woodsmoke and necrotic flesh, curls around him: another cue to the Fade dancing at Dorian's command. A human voice rising in heartrending fear signals the spell striking home.

The behemoth and the arrow hit Bull in the same instant. The shaft sinks into his side through the boiled leather of his armour. Then there's a warped face full of teeth too close to his own, and claws tearing at his front. He puts as much force into the punch as he can, and it snaps teeth and rips cartilage. It doesn't dislodge the beast. Usually his sheer mass and strength see him through in quarters this close, but the behemoth is a match for him. They teeter and tumble, the full bulk of the creature falling on him. Razor edges of lyrium grate against his armour.

Bull tries to plant his feet, but the wet, loose sand foils him. The behemoth tears at him with a will, its noises reduced to gurgling, spraying lyrium shards and drops of viscera. He wrests a knife from his belt and more shoves the blade into its mouth. Long enough to go clean through a human skull, the knife sinks to the hilt. It buys Bull the chance to kick the creature halfway off him and grab his dropped axe.

The world is very narrow. He knows it was raining but is not aware of the gusts coming down. Blood oozes steadily from his wounds, feeding the hot, beating core of his purpose. Still on his knees, he brings the axe down one-handed. It splinters the lyrium, strike by strike. The behemoth's severed arm lands next to him in a spreading pool of blood, sucked up by the sand.

Shattering its ribcage with a final merciless cut, he surges to his feet. Twisted, twitching bodies lie here and there: almost a dozen in all. Someone is still wailing piteously. Untidy mounds of dissipating spell ice fan out on the ground. His heart is a drum, a roar in his chest.

Something moves on his left, and he turns like a hammer descending to the anvil. A staff topped with the glow of focusing crystals--a mage, still on their feet. His opponent shouts something, but the fury in his blood won't let him hesitate.

He runs headfirst into what is best described as a solid wall of _no_. Bull's fought blood mages. He knows the way they worm their way into your thoughts. This is different: clean and savagely efficient denial that sprawls him backwards. His back slams into the ground and might rebound if not for the yielding sand.

Slowly he puts a hand to his nose, as if it should be crooked from the impact. His field of vision seems to widen with the breath that leaves his chest. He draws several more, just to be sure.

"Feeling calmer?" Dorian's voice hovers above him. "Shall I knock you on the head with my staff to make sure?" The lack of _you brutish oaf_ or _bloody Qunari_ divulges his anger--and anxiety--more clearly than a barrage of insults would.

Not an _enemy_ mage, then.

"Crap." Bull lets his head sink back onto the sand.

"I'll take that as a yes." Dorian's footfalls come towards him. "There's an arrow in your side. And... sand in every other wound you have."

"The rain'll wash it off." Rising is not an inviting prospect. Bull pushes himself up to sit. The arrow shaft sends a jag of pain along his ribs that makes his vision shimmer. "Where's the boss?"

"Taking a detour to the Fade," Dorian says, sounding more like his usual frothy facade. "Cole says she will be fine. If you're inclined to take the word of a strange spirit boy in medical matters."

"Talk straight, mage," Bull grouses. "The fuck happened to them?"

"Another of those red lyrium juggernauts, it seems." Dorian crouches beside him, holding a linen handkerchief. Somehow that figures. If anyone in Thedas managed to preserve a spotless handkerchief in the briny backwoods of the Storm Coast, it'd be Dorian Pavus. Gingerly he scrapes away a crust of sand and blood on Bull's cheek. "And the good Inquisitor decided to leave our only brawler of any worth behind."

"Is that a compliment?" Bull would laugh. It might jostle another injury. Dorian shakes the sand from the cloth, then returns to his task.

"She took a blow to the head. Those beasts have some rudimentary grasp of how dangerous mages are, so it went for her first." Dorian speaks low. His hand trails down the side of Bull's neck, soft fabric skirting the edges of open scratches. "Varric went to help Cole with her. If you can walk, we had best get out of plain sight."

"Lend me a shoulder and we'll see."

Dorian gives no snide comment, only shifts one of Bull's arms around his shoulders and helps him, not too shakily, to his feet.

After a bit of a wait, the others rejoin them. The Inquisitor has regained her senses, although she leans heavily on Cole. They withdraw from the strip of beach and make a fire in the lee of a great tilted rock in a sheltered gorge off the shore. It's a longish walk back to their nearest base camp, so Varric breaks out a flask of ale and divvies up some hard cheese and traveller's bread.

Varric is also the one to pull the arrow from Bull's side and press one of Stitches's poultices on it. Normally Bull himself would be volunteering, or Lavellan with her elven herb lore, but her hands still tremble and her eyes wander. Cole sits hunched beside her, tasked with keeping her awake and engaged. Having lit the fire, Dorian keeps tending to it with a care quite unlike him.

Bull almost wishes he had something occupy him, too. It's not a shining moment of victory for any of them. The Red Templars are still holed up in the caves further along the shoreline. They chipped the enemy's ranks, though. As soon as the boss can see straight--and the rain lets up, maybe--they'll trek to the camp and bolster their own numbers with some Inquisition scouts.

Supporting himself on his long-hafted axe, its blade hooded with leather, Bull stands up.

"Going somewhere, Tiny?" Varric looks up from the journal in his lap. He's jotting down some flash of inspiration with a charcoal stick.

"A look around," he says. "If there's trouble, give a shout and I'll come running."

"Hobbling seems more likely," Dorian points out.

"Have a little faith, 'Vint. And a little respect for my company healer's remedies."

Dorian opens his mouth, then closes it again. Before his improbable silence is broken, Bull turns and limps down the gentle, grassy descent as speedily as his various aches allow. Behind him, Cole's hushed, flowing voice mixes into the drip of the rain until the rushing sea drowns out them both.

He finds a flat rock near the tide line and sits down. He works one shoulder joint back and forth, then the other, tests the movement of his limbs. Most of his injuries are superficial, and the elfroot draught he took will hasten their mending. Clouds curl above the sea, storm-dark and sun-pale, vying for room, but the wind is pressing the rain inland. There's salt and decay in its taste, but also the damp promise of green summer. He's getting used to the way that smells in the south, not like the rambling, redolent jungles of Seheron.

Of course he'd think of Seheron after what happened today. It disturbed the settled pool of his mind, stirring up the murk that he prefers layered at the bottom. The reaving is only useful as long as it remains leashed. Here he's unfathomably far from the Ben-Hassrath or the tamassrans, who can tighten that leash when it frays.

When he hears Dorian come up--his steps are slow, not his common, confident pace with a hint of swagger--Bull doesn't look until the other man stops beside his rock.

"I'm curious," Dorian begins.

Bull could say many things to that, but doesn't.

Dorian sticks his staff in the sand, leans on it. "Do you customarily end fights by menacing your comrades-in-arms? I'd like to be informed, if that is the case."

It's like there's steel beaten into his bones, an unwelcome stiffness settled through him. Bull looks ahead, his ears pricked for Dorian's timbre. The continued absence of epithets is telling.

"It's a balance," Bull says after a beat. "The worse you hurt, the harder you hit them." And sometimes that thin edge wobbles under your feet.

"What is that? Some kind of barbaric blood-rage ritual?" Dorian tries, no doubt, to sound academically detached.

"Says the guy whose countrymen bathe in the blood of their slaves for kicks."

The ripping, indrawn breath that sounds from Dorian is enough to make Bull regret his words. On the best days it's simple. Tama sent him to learn the mysteries of dragon's blood. They'd serve him well when he'd have to fight deep in enemy territory, to reach the prowess of many warriors with only one body.

Dorian turns, his staff leaving a dragged oval dent in the sand.

"Dorian," Bull says, low in his mouth, and Dorian halts. The askance glance he gives Bull is laced with wariness. "Not exactly. It's a Qunari skill, though I figure we're not the only ones using it. Seen it a few times in my travels."

"Very evasive."

"And the point of being privy to secret warrior lore and just sharing it with every nosy 'Vint that asks would be..." He lets the ending hang.

Dorian makes noise that might be a guffaw, though Bull would describe it as such to his face only if he were prepared to duck tiny fireballs. "All right. I take your point."

Then he circles over to face Bull, a bit to the right of him, and drops onto his haunches. His staff juts up, rested against his shoulder.

Bull closes his eye, blinks it open. The wind ruffles Dorian's hair, grown so long on the road that he mutters about it on a daily basis. Washing endless contours of translucent froth onto the shore, the tide creeps in.

"If that ever happens again, you knock me over the head," he says, allowing his voice to drop the way it wants to. "That spell you did seemed to work pretty well, too."

"I'd prefer to save that for our adversaries." Dorian scoots back as a long, shallow wave licks over his boots.

"It's what an ally would do. A _comrade-in-arms_ ," Bull drawls the word. His breath seems to come lighter, even against his aching ribs, the flesh tender around the arrow wound, though it missed bone.

"No, no," Dorian says suddenly. "This won't do."

Bull lifts an inquisitive eyebrow. Pushing back his hair--the wind is putting the oils he tames it with to the test--Dorian makes a face. "I don't do this. I'm atrocious at comfort. I suppose I can exchange a few taunts before this wind chills me stiff, or offer you a drink. Though it would be a waste of perfectly passable Antivan brandy."

" 'Passable' is about right for that Red Bastion in your hip flask. Should have let it age a few more years."

Dorian blusters, then, without warning, laughs. It's reserved, but genuine. "Such dilemmas we face. Shall I leave the only Antivan brandy I could find south of the Waking Sea in the bottle and risk the world ending before I may partake, or drink it while it might be subpar?"

"What I want to know is, are you going to make good on sharing, or just keep teasing?" He might not mind either way. The black thoughts scratching at him are gentling. The pain, the blood, the constrained focus are falling back into their places. He is not in Seheron, and he is contained in himself.

With a rustle of cloth and the twist of a cork, Dorian holds out an ornate metal flask. "Spare me some. It has been that sort of day."

"It'll be a different sort tomorrow." Bull accepts the flask and sips. " _Meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun._ "

The movement not so much hesitant as thoughtful, Dorian lays a hand on his shoulder, over the pauldron, and presses with his fingers once. "I'm afraid I'll need a translation."

" 'The tide rises, the tide falls, but the sea is changeless.' " The brandy is indeed middling, but it warms his throat going down. "In Common, it all balances out."

They share the flask and the rock in silence, until the tide is drifting back to the sea and Varric comes down the beach to look for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stayed up a night to finish this because it wouldn't let me sleep, so if you want to be very kind, comments are adored!


	3. A Distant Knell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Bull!" His thoughts slip forward like a landslide. He is too late to dispel the despair demon, but there's a torrent of flame at the tip of his mind. He can't shift the incantation now. "Bull, move!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a thematic companion piece to Chapter 2, for Dorian this time. Also, shoutout to the ship tag on tumblr for Giving Me Ideas. Which ideas specifically, should be clear by the end of the chapter.

The scouting round is devolving into a thinly disguised evening stroll. Cassandra has her hand on her sword-hilt, but she is telling Cole some grudging story of her heroic past, gesturing now and then to perhaps demonstrate a daring fencing manoeuvre. Dorian glances at the twosome, lagging several paces behind, before turning back to Bull and resuming his frown.

"Yes, I am with you as far as strategy games to alleviate the tedium of nights at camp. I'm not bored enough to play with you unless we can agree on the rules."

"Afraid of a little improvisation?" Bull leaps--the word _skip_ cannot be applied to a mountainous qunari, even though the distance is short--between two froth-spattered stones spanning the little river they've been following. The stupendously green boughs of the Emerald Graves sigh and sway overhead.

"The Archon's Gambit is set up with twelve pieces a side everywhere from Rivain to Vol Dorma."

"Except in Seheron, where they play with ten."

"Savages and infidels, clearly, the lot of them." The river rushes over a cliff some fifty paces downstream, and a silvery mist of vapour rises above the rapids. Dorian might linger on the picturesque sight.

"I'll give you the first any day." Bull, too, checks to see that Cole and Cassandra are still trailing them. The Inquisitor remained at the camp, the hilltop where it stands now hidden by the ancient trees. She had to answer some raven-borne missive at once and requested Vivienne's advice on the matter of wording, so the rest of them decided to roam for another hour.

Dorian's been away from Tevinter too long if he's enjoying all this verdant wilderness.

"She hides, humble, harried, but there's a hero's heart in her," Cole declares, as loud as he ever does.

Cassandra chuckles and shakes her head. "I never enjoyed the attention. But you asked for the story."

"Just take the compliment," Bull hollers from across the river.

"It's true," Cole says, and then his gaze tracks over the warbling water and to a point just above the rapids. In the same moment, a lash of raw, unravelling energy practically slaps Dorian in the face. The Fade froths at the back of his mind where his magic wells forth.

"Get back--" He yanks his staff free from its strap, accompanied by the scrape of Cassandra's sword on the wood of the scabbard. For once, Bull is the last of them to react, lacking any kind of preternatural early warning.

The slanting light over the rapids splits open. The sickly, glowering green of the Fade cracks through the air.

Bull finds his voice and his axe in the same instant. "Kid, run back to camp and get the boss! We'll hold them here!"

"Do it," Cassandra confirms at Cole's wide-eyed look of protest. He is the fastest and stealthiest of them. Without the Inquisitor, the best they can do is stem the tide of maddened spirits. Tucking his hat firmly over his ears, Cole dashes off.

"Wonderful." Dorian lets Cassandra take front, preparing to gauge aiming lines for his spells. "Anyone want to guess what comes through first? A tormented soul? A demon of fear?"

"If we smash 'em to flinders, it doesn't make much difference," Bull mutters. Dorian fancies that he sounds grave, a change from his usual cocky attitude.

The rift flares with tendrils of emerald light, and Cassandra closes with the first rage demon before it can even coalesce. Her blade passes through the dripping mass of its form, once, twice, before it crumples into fragments of rock and magic. Sending a wave of frost to hamper the next monster, Dorian leaves it to Bull to finish off while he draws together the pattern for a dispelling glyph.

Between the three of them, it goes with swift efficiency and even moderate panache until the rift roars wider. The incandescent glow throws back the thickening shadows, and a towering demon of pride strides through. Shrugging off Dorian's hurried volley of flames, it lets a twisting ball of lightning swell in its taloned paw.

"Crap, crap, crap," he can hear Bull blurt out under his breath. Up to his shins in the stream, Bull scrambles for the shore. Dorian is unsure if demons know how lightning will spread through water, but this isn't the moment to test their luck.

"Fall back!" Cassandra commands, cut through with gasps. She's taken the hardest hits, blunting their edges with her Seeker skills. They do as she says, the other two keeping themselves between Dorian and the demon. He tugs the cork off a potion vial with his teeth and swallows heedless of the chilling burn of the lyrium. There's no breathing room, so the draught has to replace a few heartbeats of reprieve.

The demon thunders through the undergrowth like a walking siege engine, shaking the ground. The veined plates covering it hiss and crackle with each step. Behind it come the otherworldly wails and screeches of other creatures creeping through the Veil. A white-hot arc of lightning leaves the smell of scorched plants in the air and smashes straight into Cassandra. She founders onto one knee with a guttural gasp.

"Seeker!" Bull is at Cassandra's side in a few strides. She grunts, tough as ironbark, bless her resilience, but the pride demon is upon them before she can recover. Rifling frantically through possible strategies, Dorian calls down another hail of fire upon it. Bull sprints into the brief breach as the demon recoils, and takes a pitiless swing at its leg. His axe burrows in, comes up with the blade coated in ichor, and descends again. Dorian dares to focus inward. The demon will slough off his quick, common combat spells. A monster of such magnitude demands a casting of similar power.

Heat prickles the nape of his neck, sparks swirling in his throat. He summons and gathers and leashes the fire. The demon staggers forward, Bull grabbing Cassandra by the arm to haul her away from its path.

A creature in the billowing tatters of a robe bursts into being barely five paces to their right. It floats in a cloud of chill; gooseflesh runs up Dorian's spine. Half blending into the twilight, the despair demon draws up its skeletal hands, and Dorian feels the roar of the magic it's about to loosen.

"Bull!" His thoughts slip forward like a landslide. He is too late to dispel the despair demon, but there's a torrent of flame at the tip of his mind. He can't shift the incantation now. "Bull, move!"

Bull is slowed by the half-stunned Cassandra and the weight of her armour. Dorian, on the other hand, is not. As he shouts, he rushes forward, veers hard towards the robed demon and releases the fire spell.

He catches sight of the demon's terrible flat-toothed maw splitting in a screech. Then the ice it was summoning erupts into the air. Heat and cold collide, and the icicles evaporate with spitting hisses as Dorian--not quite sure what he's doing--presses the flames outward from himself, hand extended as if the physical gesture could brace his will. The sustained flow of fire ignites the demon, lambent white tongues climbing up its form. He feels his knees hit the soggy grass and can't remember when he last inhaled.

A swirl of sheer elemental _cold_ pours from the monster. His spell almost exhausted, Dorian fumbles for some dreg of mana with which to shield himself. Bull, Cassandra, the pride demon--he has no inkling of anything behind him. Flakes of frost stick to his cheeks. He cracks his eyes open before they freeze shut, and watches the demon begin scattering into cinder as the clinging flame consumes it. It fists one blackened hand and hauls on some invisible strand of the ambient Fade with the last of its purpose.

A raw, jagged lump of ice, the malformed result of its final casting, hammers into Dorian's chest through his wavering barrier. His breath is expelled as something in his body gives with a sickening crunch. He stumbles backwards. To his right he has a blurry glimpse of Cassandra, swinging ferociously at the half-toppled pride demon, and then, to his left, of Bull bisecting the charred figure of the despair demon. Blood wells into his mouth with his next rattling breath.

When Dorian collapses, his last impression is of a timely, strong arm scooping him up, and then things get very hazy.

*

He stirs to the smells of the campfire and the horses, overlaid with a blend of herbal stinks and fragrances: someone has a medicine chest open nearby. It seems he's been spared the indignity of expiring from the last-ditch effort of some two-bit demon.

"Don't move now, darling," says Vivienne, and deigns to set a hand to his shoulder to inhibit any sudden movement. Dorian has no such inclinations. His breath is free of any ominous wheezing, but bandages wrap firmly around his chest, and even raising his arm sets off dulled beats of pain in his side. "That was quite the close call, but then you've always had a flair for the dramatic."

They are still in the open night air, though under a canopy erected over the makeshift infirmary. Dorian finds himself not on a bedroll, but a low camp cot, laid with planks under the straw and bedding so he can lie with his upper body straight.

"I..." He tries to piece this picture together. There's the aftertaste of elfroot in his mouth, which explains the blunting of his hurt. "I didn't know you had an aptitude for healing, madame."

"What, shall I leave myself without resources in places where even the hint of poor health opens one to the risk of calumny?" She smiles faintly, a nudge of her painted lips. "It is your luck I was here. Draining a lung without magic is an unpleasant business."

"Not fascinated by blood sports, are you? I stand--lie--corrected."

"I could have let the surgeon at you, and perhaps lost the only halfway cultured conversation I can find within a three-day ride." She turns to a basin of water set on a trestle bench and begins scrubbing her hands. "I think not."

"You flatter me," he says. "I'd offer a proper courtesy, but I might sabotage all your hard work."

"You may postpone it until your recovery." Drying her hands on a cloth, Vivienne stands, and her spine settles into immaculate poise at once. "He is all yours, dear."

Dorian frowns in short-lived mystification before Vivienne steps away and Bull, who was crouching by the nearby fire, settles onto the bench in her stead. Superficial lightning burns speckle his weapon arm, with a dressing fixed around its upper part. Otherwise he looks unharmed, although the hue of his skin and the low light may conceal other bruises and scratches.

Everyone else, it appears, has either gone to bed or is minding their own business. Dorian's bemusement doesn't so much fade as change shade.

"You," Bull begins, gravelly and emphatic, "are the maddest son of a mother this side of the Nocen Sea."

A chuckle breaks through Dorian's confusion before he can draw it in, jostling its way up from his abused lungs. "My mother would have your head on a plate for that."

"That was gutsy, though. And kind of hot."

He swallows. That drawl in Bull's voice might bother him more if not for the haze of elfroot about his head.

Before Dorian can pull together the obvious rejoinder about _heat_ and _fire spells_ , Bull goes on, "We'll make an honourary Charger out of you yet."

"Oh, please. I will not start any quaint routines of referring to my magic as exceptionally flashy archery."

"Better not. Dalish would get jealous," Bull says with the rough fondness that the topic of the Chargers seems to elicit from him. It occurs to Dorian that the comparison could be a sign of esteem rather than teasing.

"Did we at least win?" He leans his head into the thin pillow.

"Oh, yeah. Pretty soon after you swooned dead away, too."

Scoffing, Dorian mentally retracts the part about esteem. "When did you last see anyone bring down a despair demon with a single spell, pray tell?"

"Hey, I'm not knocking your feats of spellcasting. Should've seen Cassandra take apart the big one, though. She broke its jaw with her shield. Broke the shield, too, but that's details."

"I'm glad my injury hasn't soured your passion for beastly entertainments," Dorian says. "Do keep it on a rein, though. I distinctly remember the lovely Seeker rebuffing you after a conversation much like this."

Bull raises one eyebrow. It stays up for long enough to unnerve Dorian. "Not that I am... You have made sure that I will live, if that was your intention. I should..." It's unlikely he _should_ do anything but rest. Sitting up is probably not recommended.

"I owe you one," Bull says at last. "Foolhardy or not, you saved our asses. I don't know if Cassandra will bend enough to thank you, so I thought I'd handle that for both of us."

Dorian fidgets the hem of his blanket, then musters his dignity and his voice. "I had a spell primed, and you were dawdling."

The glancing light of the fire dances across Bull's face as he shifts forward. The bench is a generous arm's-reach from the cot, not much distance at all.

"You even survived that stunt." Bull lets his hands hang slack between his parted knees. "Glad you did. There's probably no one else in the Inquisition who'd reminisce about cracked old bells and Minrathous dancers with me."

Dorian isn't pulling on a shred of mana, but heat floods his throat like the somatic echo of spell flame. It is the elfroot, or some insidious wave of wound fever. Hallucinations are likely to be just around the corner.

"I don't know how it can be," he says valiantly, "that you've been _all over_ the Imperium and have never played a round of Archon's Gambit with a dozen pieces."

"I played with a baker's dozen once in Llomerryn." Bull doesn't quite look at Dorian, but angles a little past him. He reaches to set his wide, scarred hand on Dorian's upper arm. "They call it the Magister's Temptation down that way."

" _Fasta vass._ " Dorian will either laugh or let himself implode from the gentle, hot pressure in his chest that has nothing to do with cracked ribs or contused lungs. So he buries his face in his palm and gives up a quiet, hacking string of chortles. "Fine. Thirteen pieces it is. And you will write down the rules for me to inspect."

"You got it." There's a skim of knuckles against Dorian's jaw, and then Bull sits up straight. "You better get up soon then. Can't get a proper view of the board lying down."

Humming in answer, not finding the words, Dorian lets his eyes close. Something inside him reverberates like that aged, battered bell in Minrathous, a sound both troubled and sweet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, have yet another iteration of Dorian taking a blow for Bull (and Cassandra, hi Cassandra).
> 
> I'm pretty sure I can promise you (my reasonably tame attempts at) actual smut in the next chapter. That might delay its arrival some, though, so kindly bear with me here. Thank you for all the feedback so far. ♥


	4. Warm Strangers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's past midnight, the summer storm banging the shutters and the fire in the common room hearth dying into embers, when Dorian comes to Bull's table with ale on his breath and a truth on his lips.
> 
> "You want me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am back with far too many words of a smut-like thing that's at least half negotiation and characters being complicated. This version diverges from the first time implied by canon banter, but feel free to assume they had that particular night soon afterwards.
> 
> Thanks to all the lovely people on tumblr who kept liking and commenting on my progress snippets. <3 I hope it hangs together as a whole.
> 
> I'm 99% sure I picked up "fire-spitter" from Barkour's excellent DorianxBull stories, because it had a nice sound to it. So credit where credit is due. :)

It's past midnight, the summer storm banging the shutters and the fire in the common room hearth dying into embers, when Dorian comes to Bull's table with ale on his breath and a truth on his lips.

"You want me."

He makes a declaration out of it--a hushed, confidential one, one hand on the pock-marked tabletop, the other raised for emphasis. His impeccable hair is mussed by the fretful tracks of fingers through it. With the fire gleaming off his eyes, they are dark, wide, expressive.

"The sky is blue," Bull replies, setting the tankard in his hand aside. "Except in the Fade, where it's the kind of green it should never be. And you're mouthy when you're drunk."

Dorian is also _right_. Bull's made little secret of this. His training fostered concealing that which he doesn't want shown. He got good at it by sticking a few select things to the forefront so they obscured the rest. His nature, however, is direct, and there's most often no point in hiding that you'd gladly tumble someone. Either they refuse, and that's that, or they agree, and a good time may be had by all.

Dorian has taken his sweet time about coming to a conclusion. Bull would say it's typical twisty 'Vint horseshit, but it's really just Dorian. That's the trouble with getting to know them. They start looking less and less like the enemy.

"Three pints of this swill they term ale doesn't equal my being drunk." That is probably true. On the other hand it's barely audible in his speech until he's giving himself away by stumbling.

"Right. Not drunk. You just wanted to point out the obvious on your way to bed."

Breathing out a long-winded Tevene epithet, Dorian heaves himself upright. His fingers twitch at his sides. "That was disappointing."

Bull slants his mouth to one side, trailing Dorian with a long, canted look. "If you want to elaborate, I'm all ears."

He had an inkling that something was gnawing at Dorian even before he left his cozy spot by the hearth to come lean over Bull's table. He was pensive throughout the usual evening stint of cards, made few muttered comments when Bull cleared the last round, and lingered while the others tromped off to sleep. Bull has been falling into old habits--the road keeps them fresh, to be exact--and taking stock of the other patrons.

Even so this wouldn't have been his first guess. Most people give away more than they intend. Dorian mostly reveals that he hides a bloody great heap of things; some Bull has sorted out, others are works in progress.

"That is it?" Right now Dorian is a curious mixture of tension and relief, incredulity and wounded dignity. "What, all those boorish comments were only hot air? All that staff-polishing and manhandling, simply for show?"

It is a fine look on him. "Blame a man for testing the waters, will you?"

"I _would_ blame him for false promises."

"Ah." There's a change in the moment; a pliant seam that can give or seal. Bull turns a quarter on the bench. A stream of conversation wells from a table on the opposite side of the room, but here, at the corner of the stairs, they might as well be alone. "Come here."

Dorian's inhalation catches, clearly without his leave. Bull can see his throat working even in the stark shadow as the feeble firelight limns him from behind. He is layer upon layer of bluster and denial, but he fired the opening round.

Dorian comes around the rough-hewn table, his fingers skimming the top. One more step and he'd be inside Bull's reach.

"Promises, huh?" Bull keeps his head tilted, one side of his neck showing, the tendon taut. "You want me to make good, you'll have to get a little closer, 'Vint."

The push of a hand against his shoulder sets off a thrum of satisfaction. He doesn't get long to glory in it, because then Dorian crowds him, warm, hasty hands grasping his shoulder and his horn. He gives a bit, nothing to it, hears the rasp of doubt in Dorian's breath.

"This is an egregious idea."

Bull lets his hand settle on his hip, a venture rewarded when Dorian stays where he is. "Egregious as in awful, or as in excellent?"

"As in terrible. How do you even know that other meaning? It's antiquated."

"The tamassrans teach us Common. They don't get out of Par Vollen much."

Laughter bursts out of Dorian in an unsteady chortle. The corners of his eyes crinkle with unguarded amusement. He is far too pretty not to kiss when he laughs, and so Bull does.

The laugh becomes a gasp against his mouth. Dorian's fingers tighten their grip and he goes still, all that constant motion and nervous energy becalmed. Bull presses a notch, cants Dorian's head to get him where he wants him, and Dorian leans into the slower, deeper contact with a tiny, treacherous tug of surprise in his breathing.

He also breaks the kiss first. His teeth flick an utterly distracting groove across his lower lip. If Bull were a worse person, he'd ask, _How long has it been?_ He doesn't. Dorian would probably storm off, and this is going places too promising to ruin.

"Reconsidering how terrible this could be?"

"Perhaps." Dorian's eyes veer towards the scattered tables in the middle of the room and then back. "I have exhausted my travel reading."

"Coming from you, that's almost flattering. Being the next best thing to a book for sharing your bed." Bull fits his right hand to the shape of Dorian's skull, firm but not forceful. Not that he thinks Dorian is fragile--but he is a human, and to a qunari like a bow stave to a sword blade.

"Ah, presumption," Dorian says. His mouth slants over Bull's again. Where the previous kiss was steady and searching, this one slips and tangles. Dorian pushes into the space between Bull's legs. Happy to oblige, Bull wraps an arm around him and tucks him in until Dorian slides one folded knee over his thigh, yielding part of his weight for Bull to support.

"You wanna take these presumptions upstairs before we become the most interesting thing in the room?" Bull inhales in a drawn-out pull. He has a lapful of eager 'Vint here, and the moment Dorian even thinks someone might stare, that's liable to go out the window.

"Yes," Dorian says, no guff, no pretence, his eyes half-lidded and his pupils wide. If Bull didn't know it'd get him scorned or stung with lightning, he'd sweep him up and carry him up the stairs.

Dorian makes that moot by retreating enough for Bull to get to his feet. He moves with languid purpose, fingers drumming on the railing as he swerves up the spiralled stairs. Bull trails him and gets a little sidetracked by the line of his back, the curve of his ass.

Dorian is pretty--and that's too easy. He likes to make much of it at every turning and opening. That works as a wall in itself. You thrust something forward because that diverts attention from whatever moves beneath. While Bull is happy to ask his permission, divest him of all those complicated buckles and snug leather, and fuck him until he begs, there's more to it.

At the top of the stairs, Dorian drags him down for another kiss, up on his toes and a hand at the base of Bull's horn to span the head's height that Bull has on him.

"Here?" The space between their faces is thick with their breath. Bull makes a joke out of the question, the brow above his good eye quirked.

"I have a room," Dorian says with a respectable curl of primness in his husking voice. "I never quite got the charm of the common sleeping quarters."

"Yeah, about that." With a hand on his back, Bull nudges him one door over. "Better if we pick mine."

"Oh?" That's all the objection Dorian gives, but the thought stays pinched in the squinted corner of his eye.

The room is dark beyond what illumination spills from the corridor. Bull steals a flame from the lantern by the stairs to the one dangling from a rust-specked hook just inside the door. A bed, a washstand, a battered chest for storing belongings and a hefty stool make up the whole of the furniture. This far out on the road, privacy means little more than a door to lock in the face of fellow travellers.

"It’s about as pedestrian as mine." Dorian leans on the headboard as if gauging borders. A pause forms, awareness blending into the forward momentum.

"That's not the point." Bull turns the key so the old lock clicks, and leaves it in the hole, the wrought brass end sticking out.

"What is, if I may ask?" Dorian draws his head up, neck long but guarded by his level jaw, a gesture of assertion.

"That you can go," Bull says. "Turn the key, walk out, and go somewhere else. Somewhere yours. Crappy inn room still works for that."

The light is bad, and the stormy night would offer no moon to add to it even if the shutters weren't hasped fast. Dorian's soft noise of disbelief is the most of his reaction that Bull can sense. "That is novel, I admit."

"Want to see if I can do one better?" He lets mirth back into his voice. You can tell Dorian never had a tamassran in his life. The better part of his current truths are patchy makeshift things he's had to put together himself around steely cores of belief. No guidance, no relief, no constants--precious few borders drawn. It's no wonder, considering what Inquisition gossip and the rare frank remark from Dorian himself have yielded on his life before they met.

"Oh, do get on with it." Dorian huffs.

Bull kisses him once more, with slow, thorough focus that thankfully strips the irritation from him. He turns out more tactile than you might give him credit for, nimble mage's fingers tugging at the buckles of Bull's shoulder guard and getting sidetracked into mapping the breadth of his shoulders.

Bull shucks the loosened pauldron to the floor and pushes Dorian's chin up. Strokes a hand down his throat and feels his breath come in an amazed shudder. His eyelids drop and flicker. Bull tells the movement mostly by the glint of the lantern off his shuttering eyes.

"Help me with these." He runs his thumb over the ornate buttons on Dorian's vest. "You'll probably bite me if I rip something getting you out of them."

Dorian's hands drift to the fastenings. "Shall I take that to mean that biting you is not a desirable prospect? I'd be surprised."

It seems neither drink nor arousal muddles his vocabulary. Not that Bull is trying hard yet.

"Goes with the brutish Qunari cliché?" He sets his teeth to Dorian's bared shoulder and drags a rasping, teasing streak along the collarbone. Dorian swears, but the oath is hoarse with want more than annoyance.

"I said no such thing." The sleeved vest apparently comes off handily if you know what to do. Dorian drops it over the chest, then pulls the linen shirt underneath off over his head.

"What you say is less than half of what you let on," Bull says. He should have thought this through a little more. Such as by setting up another light. The dim lantern, he's sure, does no justice to Dorian naked to the waist.

"You say that as if I hadn't been raised by--" The rest is lost in a sigh. "Never mind. I implied no offence." This time Dorian's hand slides along the underside of Bull's jaw in a casual sort of caress.

"Not offended." Bull would bend to him, but his neck is putting up a complaint, so he clasps the backs of Dorian's thighs and hefts him. With a breathy yelp, Dorian balances himself, his ankles hooking behind Bull's back. His belt buckles and half-hard cock press into Bull's stomach, and then his mouth is at Bull's ear. It's a wholly unlamentable cliché in turn that Dorian's tongue proves talented with more than snappy retorts. Shifting Dorian's weight to free one arm, Bull sweeps a hand over his buttock, his hip, up his back. Dorian curls into the slide of Bull's palm.

"This is--" he begins, then gasps hard.

"Getting impatient?" Bull hefts him enough to kiss the juncture of his neck and shoulder, to breathe in and out onto the wet, vulnerable skin. It's more to steady Bull himself, but Dorian groaning at the gust of warm air is a nice side benefit.

"This is fine as such," Dorian manages. Maybe Bull should let him speak. "Is it going somewhere?"

For a blink Bull digests that. Taking a step back, he sits down on the too-small bed and brings Dorian with him, his knees settling around Bull's thighs. "You're a piece of work, aren't you, 'Vint?"

Dorian's mouth snaps shut. Not for long. "Well. More commonly at this stage, I'd either be bent over something or in the least have a cock in my mouth."

Bull smothers a laugh or a curse. He'll never know which it is, because he works it down his throat with a methodical swallow. "So you _know_ how to be upfront."

Dorian's shaky exhalation betrays a crack in his candour. His hands fall onto his own thighs. "I remember expressing myself quite clearly."

"Yeah." Bull runs his knuckles along Dorian's ribs, heeding a set of bruises he took in a recent fight. Dorian lingers, as if of two minds. "The key's in the door."

Sometimes you don't know what you want until you're neck-deep in it. Other times, it takes going that far for second thoughts to appear.

"I comment on things not moving quickly enough and you tell me to leave?"

If not for the veneer of stropped indignation, Bull would take him at his word, by force of principle. He's had a few months to study Dorian, as he studies everyone.

"Only thing keeping either of us here is that we both want it." He remains still, because it's up in the air if that truth holds. "You came to me, fire-spitter. You decide."

That quiets Dorian. Bull lets his thoughts spool out, loose and ready to catch on. There was a woman in another group of travellers in the common room, a riot of freckles on her cheeks and a glimmer of lust and fascination in her gaze. Easier, maybe, to have let her follow through on that glimmer. She'd have gone another way in the morning. But Dorian is here, now, and his breaths are deep and stringent with an attempt at focus.

"Do you labour to confound everyone you wish to bed, or am I the lucky exception?"

"You are more effort than I usually put in, sure." Bull shrugs, though the gesture is mostly lost. "Held my interest, though. Seemed that you needed to figure it out. To decide if I had what you wanted."

The conversation is closing in on an elusive point--not really one he planned to let into the open. In general he prefers things simple. As simple as anything can be in the south, but he's adapted to the most obvious hurdles by now. Maybe the irony of this moment is that to everyone around them, Dorian, too, is a northerner and a suspicious element in the ranks of the Inquisition.

"What _I_ wanted?" Dorian sounds muffled. "You went to all that trouble to see if I--isn't that a little backwards?"

"Depends on your point of view." Bull shifts back, rests a fraction of his weight on a hand to the bed.

"When I've been... approached by men, what they want has tended to be first on their minds." That tiny hesitation speaks much, though Dorian has regained a more trifling timbre. It's some degree of absurd or touching that he hasn't moved away.

"Hey, let's not paint me as selfless here." Bull knows that might goad Dorian; he half hopes that it will. This is getting a little deeper than he thought, and not in any way he may have envisioned. "You've seen yourself. You spend enough time with mirrors every day."

"That is not what we're debating, if I may remind you."

"It's not?" Bull rolls his neck through a set of angles. A muscle in his shoulder is strung too taut. "Thought we were talking about what works. You damn sure do work for me. Though if you've decided you can't do this and respect me in the morning, maybe it's best we call it a night."

Bull doesn't police what his Chargers get up to in their tents on dreary nights on the road, but he keeps an eye out for any fallout. In the same vein, the Inquisitor's inner circle has to be a team through thick and thin. Someone in a snit over a disastrous affair is a thing that happens. It just had better not turn into mischief in the middle of a job.

Dorian lets out a rattling hum of wan mirth. "As it happens, I'm rather apt at putting incidental lovers behind me. You'll hardly manage anything that'll haunt me."

"Tevinter taught you that, hm?" No sense in honey-coating it. Coddling is another thing Bull tries not to do, which seems to be the right course this time. Dorian tilts his head up; his breath brushes against Bull's face.

"Mmhm," he replies, around something else on his tongue. "There are more pleasant lessons here."

Straightening his game knee, Bull splays a hand over Dorian's lower back, carefully blunted claws skimming skin. If Dorian decides that this distraction sits fine with him, Bull has a vested interest in continuing it. He'd like--there are any number of things he'd like. Opportunity drops in small doses. He learned patience early and well. He can go one at a time.

"One more thing," he says.

In the middle of leaning forward, Dorian pauses. "Go on then."

"Pick a word. Any word, but not one you're likely to say while we're here." He doesn't break out this point during every one-off tumble, but the moment invites it. "You say that word and we stop. No questions asked."

A ripple of wonderment goes through Dorian. " 'No' won't suffice?"

"Probably, yeah, but it's got more than one meaning."

It would be like Dorian to wrangle over the subject. Instead he thinks, then says, the fingertips of one hand laid against Bull's chest, " _Kost_."

Bull considers a comment, judges it too biting, and ends up with, "All right. You remember that?"

"I _picked_ it." That's fair. Before either of them comes up with another topic of discussion, Bull grabs Dorian by the nape to kiss him. Patience unlocks all doors, he was taught, but this one's ajar and edging open. Clearly not to be outdone, Dorian all but falls into the touch. He kisses back as if he had a point to prove and about the next ten beats of his heart to do so. He's crouched warm and heavy and hesitant in Bull's lap for long enough. Bull drinks in his determination and his eagerness. A reminder, _this is where we left off._

He'll have all of tomorrow's walking to ponder where he's stepped this time. Now, Dorian is wresting at the buckles of his belt, the kiss turning distracted as he tries to divide his attention. It's rather past time they did get naked, so Bull dislodges Dorian from his lap for the sake of disrobing. Dorian, of course, breaks away to set the rest of his attire on top of the chest. Bull laughs a hearty laugh that's sat in his throat for too long.

"Oh, I amuse you, do I?"

"Egregiously," Bull agrees, just to get another disgruntled sigh out of Dorian, and pulls him in.

Dorian gives with surprising ease, something loosened in his bearing. He crowds close for a kiss, wild and messy, like he's finally forgotten his Tevinter posturing. The flitting light leaves them both as planes and outlines of limbs and bodies, lit one moment, shadowed the next.

Bull scrapes a work-roughened thumb down the inside curve of Dorian's shoulder blade, and Dorian makes a reedy, ruined sound. Bull does it again. Dorian bites his neck a touch too hard, then just gasps quick, damp breaths onto his shoulder. He doesn't resist when Bull presses him onto his stomach onto the rough-woven linens and traces the sloping line of his back in one long, purposeful stroke.

The bed is abjectly cramped, stingily sized even for one human-sized occupant. Bull had planned to haul the hemp-stuffed mattress onto the floor for sleeping. He makes do. He straddles Dorian's legs to seal bruising kisses down the back of his neck and between each raised knob of his spine. The mattress rustles as Dorian's fingers burrow into it. Bull feels the muscles tremble and leap along his back. He's remarkably quiet, only a few stray noises, sore and cut-off, escaping from him. Sweat beads across his skin, running in thin rivulets from the roots of his hair as Bull cards a hand back through the thick strands.

 _At this stage, I'd be bent over something._ Bull would have few qualms about rising to that occasion. He gathers himself, steadies his breathing, sits back on his knees. Dorian slips quicksilver between bravery and vulnerability, between arrogance and that open, heady gleam in his eyes that makes Bull want to follow his snappish demand and fuck him into pliant, shuddery exhaustion.

The light snares Dorian's movement as he lifts himself onto his arms. Bull intercepts him with a hand on his shoulder, rubbing his thumb over the top of his spine. That elicits a hum from Dorian, half a scoff, half a purr.

"Put your hands on the headboard," Bull says. "Damn bed's too small for two."

"One of us is--is perfectly proportionate to it," Dorian grumbles, but gets onto his knees. "At least in theory. Another theory would be that the innkeep's a miserly coin-pincher who bought enough timber for dwarven beds, not human ones."

"Shit, what does it take to make you stop talking?" It's almost a paradox, Dorian's forcible silence while being touched to how the words spout from him now.

"You could resume what you stopped," Dorian suggests. If--when--they ever do this again, it'll be in better lighting. What little Bull can see of Dorian, dishevelled, bowed, and gorgeous, goes straight to his cock.

"Right," Bull says, and lets his voice darken with intent. "Hands on the headboard. No talking."

Dorian balks a bit. "Or?"

"You know the word. Otherwise, do it."

Bull is gauging him, reaction by reaction. There are broad currents of truth that apply to most everyone. No true shortcuts to grasping someone specific, though.

Dorian grabs the worn, stout wood, the bedframe grating and then settling.

Bull would fuck him. He'd not protest. It might be simplest--play to expectation and scratch the itch that brought Dorian to him. There's always more.

He digs his thumb into the base of Dorian's nape and smooths deep, even circles there. Dorian shivers, his head lolling forward as if some persistent tension had been severed. The next circle curves out into a drag of Bull's hand over shoulder and flank and thigh. Dorian's wrench of movement echoes in Bull as a jab of lust when he slides it up again and palms Dorian's straining cock, hanging smooth and heavy.

He puts his teeth to Dorian's shoulder blade, a bite followed by a wet, caressing kiss. Dorian makes a needy whimper that never coheres into a word. It might have been a while since he's been touched with desire. It is as if it's been ages since he's been touched with gentleness. Since someone laid a hand on him with any care and comfort.

One hand in Dorian's hair, Bull wraps the other around his cock and strokes with testing, gliding pressure. Dorian's upper body jerks straight as a spear, and his teeth barely trap a moan bubbling in his throat. " _Ahh._ "

"Easy, fire-spitter." Bull has no intention of rushing this. He's figuring Dorian out, and Dorian seems to agree at last, the angle of his back bespeaking offering, surrender, trust.

"Easy for _you_ to--" Well. He's getting there. With a half-amused grunt, Bull gives him another stroke, light and firm and squeezing the head just so. Dorian slumps into a forward arch. Bull turns his head to the side enough to nip and lick at his ear, then the tender spot under it. His hand moves in deliberate slides from root to tip, tightening so he can hear Dorian mutter disjointed assent, slowing and softening to make him squirm.

When Bull leans down past Dorian's shoulder, Dorian turns his head, his breath whispering over Bull's temple. There's a fumbling hand at his jaw, Dorian's grasp a shaky, stubborn squeeze to bring him to a halt. He'd speak a reminder, but Dorian cuts him off with a kiss. Or with the next best thing, an artless slide of lips and tongue, the angle bad with Dorian twisting back. Bull stops to respond. Minding the tilt of his horns, he eases closer until Dorian's shoulder burrows into his chest and it becomes a proper kiss, choppy breath and curious tongue.

Dorian withdraws, his fingers curling away. Bull's hand is still, but no grousing comment follows. He can feel how taut Dorian is wound, a groundswell smothered in faltering control. He takes Dorian's hand with his free one and leads it down until he meets the firm wood of the board again. "Stay still." Not stern, but low. Not now. There's a time for rebukes, and they're still sketching out the rules.

A hushed, wordless acknowledgment comes from Dorian, and Bull affirms it with a kiss against the dip of his spine. He lets his hand roam Dorian's ribs--on the left, not the right, where faint blue-black traces would show the ghosts of half-healed contusions--and firms his grip of Dorian's cock, hot and twitching against his fingers. Dorian bucks into his fist, hips working helplessly. "Oh, oh..."

Bull sweeps his thumb around the tip and Dorian shouts, curses in husking, crumbling Tevene, and comes messy and swift and writhing over Bull's fingers. Bull scoops him back and works him through the last of it, drawing deep, silent breaths of his own while Dorian gasps out his release and the stuttering descent.

It takes a while. For the first time in the last hour Bull spares more than a cursory awareness to the rain rapping against the shutters. The candle flickers in the horn-paned lantern. Dorian slides off Bull's thigh, and he scrubs a hand over his left knee. It's no worse than usual, but he's sat with his leg bent for some time.

"Does it pain you?" Dorian's voice is hoarse, musing.

"Eh, just the wet weather." Bull shrugs to dismiss the notion. Dorian raises his head and that's nearly reward enough, the languid look of disarray, the sheen of wit and conceit in his expression momentarily shed.

"Well, I'm glad the grown man straddling you made it no worse."

"Is that concern I hear, 'Vint?"

"And if it is?" There it is again, the wary cant of Dorian's chin. But he lets his mouth shift from a vexed curve into a gentler line. Crossing his ankles, he sits down in the space left by Bull's stretched-out leg. "May I?"

"If you specify first." What did he tell himself about twisty 'Vint horseshit earlier?

Dorian sets a hand on his calf, sketching the shape of the kneecap with a finger. "I'm hardly a healer, but..."

Bull isn't shy around the spirit healers of the Inquisition, their worth and value proven to him the first time he hobbled back to a base camp supported by an irate Cassandra to a greater degree than he cares to admit. Still, scrutiny breaks through the mixed hum of lust and satisfaction in his head. "That injury is half as old as you are. Some snap of your fingers won't make it better."

"Not _permanently_." Dorian seems to decide that Bull has voided his right to gainsay him. He draws a loop with a splayed hand, and his palm grows warmer. Not unpleasantly, but emanating soft steady heat like the side of a lit stone hearth. His left hand joins the right, tracking the raised splash of scar tissue that marks where spellfire ate into flesh and bone long ago in Seheron.

The joke might be on Bull, then, that he let a mage into his bed to help his twinging knee with the same trick.

It is soothing, though. Dorian is careful, working his hands over the aching muscles, making a querying sound or two that Bull answers with mutters in the affirmative. The pressure of his fingers, blended with the heat, blunts the pins of hurt and loosens the creeping tightness.

"That's pretty clever," Bull allows at length.

"It's elementary," Dorian huffs. "Please refrain from the pun. It'll make you about as astute as a fourteen-year-old late bloomer from the provinces bumbling into a Circle for the first time in their life."

"Flattering."

"And better?" Dorian's voice drops a little.

"Ah, yeah." Bull would shove the moment back towards its proper track if he knew where that lay anymore. Dorian looks up with a contemplative air, but something else lurks in the line of his mouth.

"It has more interesting uses, too."

"I bet," Bull says, chucks him under the chin to catch a better glimpse of his face. "You're up to something."

"That is always a safe statement to make," Dorian says smartly. "I don't know about Qunari etiquette, but my understanding is that reciprocation is a fine principle to live by."

"I think I like you better when you're too far gone to talk," Bull sighs, but there's no bite to it, and Dorian can surely tell. He's also trailing a hand, warm with a faint intimation of fire, along Bull's thigh. That should unsettle him more than it does. The reflexive misgivings thread into stirring pangs of want.

"I've been told, now and then, that I'm good with my mouth in other respects."

"Shit," Bull says more to himself than to Dorian, tugs him up to kiss him soundly on the mouth, and nudges his head down in a gesture that leaves little room for interpretation. Dorian laughs--low, merry and wicked, such as Bull can't remember hearing from him before--and does as bid.

The narrow bed forces a moment of rearranging limbs. Dorian ends up leaned over Bull's lap with what seems reasonable agreement. Bull draws a hand through his mussed hair, scraping the slight divot under the rim of the skull with a fingertip. Dorian exhales long, thoughtful, and says, "Keep it there."

Bull slits his eye open. Dorian's fingers are painting a distractingly slow path up along his thigh. "Hm?"

"Your hand, in my hair." His breath ghosts over the head of Bull's cock, and he's probably doing that on purpose. Is doing it on purpose. Good thing that Bull likes what he's hearing. "Not too rough, if you please, but..."

"I got you." Bull drags in a breath. Pressing down, fingers cupping Dorian's head, he pushes that pretty, teasing mouth where he wants it. Dorian gives a chuckle that becomes an amused vibration around his cock--perhaps unintended, but oh, welcome. He runs a glowing-warm hand up to curl around the shaft. Bull bites back a rumbling groan. He had some hopes wound into all that ribaldry aimed at Dorian, but _damn_. Can't predict everything.

He keeps his hold light, rounded claws flexing into Dorian's scalp now and then. Dorian moves with a lightness of his own, slippery, taunting strokes that don't dip very deep. His tongue rasps sharp against the underside of Bull's cock and earns him a tightening of Bull's hand. Coming up to suck at the tip, brief and maddening, he draws a loose fist up, then down more firmly.

Sitting up doesn't leave Bull much leverage to move his hips. He lets deep rough noises slither from his teeth and give voice to the heat building in his belly. Spares a tattering thought to how much noise the old timber walls will mute and then decides Dorian probably already tested that earlier.

He shifts his fingers, to make sure the movement urges rather than chokes, and presses harder. Dorian draws breath through his nose, yields to Bull's hand, curls his tongue around the stiff, sensitive head and then lets Bull dictate the pace of his strokes, smooth and easy. A hum rises in his throat, stifled amusement and assent. That sends a creeping, ferocious flare of need to unfurl up Bull's spine.

There's a threshold here, one of many. Crossed in what is agreed and allowed, hemming in what pleases and fulfills. He'll ponder them later. In the moment there is Dorian's lovely mouth and his deft fingers and then the pad of his thumb at the base of Bull's cock. He's come to expect and appreciate the flickers of warmth trailing Dorian's touch, but Dorian levers his head away, tense with concentration, and something else leaps at his fingertips. A quick, quivering pulse of light and heat into the skin and _underneath_ , enough to make Bull shake and swear. " _Fuck_ , Dorian, get--"

Fast enough on the uptake, Dorian ducks back and maintains his grip. Bull groans another ragged obscenity against the side of his head, and is unsure if it's Dorian's answering gasp or that perfect, dragging slide of his hand that does it for him.

Slowly he unfolds his fingers from Dorian's hair, and drops his hand, skimming along Dorian's side. His chest heaves, lungs straining to bring his breathing down to a resting rhythm. Dorian moves across him, knees sinking into the tangled bedclothes.

Bull tests the hold of the silence and decides that it's good for another moment. He does, however, reach for Dorian's shoulder. Are 'Vints acquainted with afterglows, or is it all so smothered and secretive that they'll be done and bam, gather your clothes, don't forget your pretensions, blast all witnesses dead, and slink out the door?

The thought rouses a tired chortle from Bull. Dorian cocks a barely visible eyebrow, as the angle at which he sits leaves the lantern directly behind him.

"What?"

"Nothing." Bull gives a slight shake of his head. "Don't think that joke would translate."

"Ah," Dorian says. "My Qunlat continues to be patchy, I fear."

"I'll teach you," Bull says, magnanimity easy when Dorian is unlikely to accept. "Something to do in the evenings, if you're out of books."

Dorian looks at him, slightly too long. "Is that a euphemism?" And Bull catches up to his own double meaning three heartbeats too late.

Damned if he knows. Well, he knows. He's a man of simple but not always straightforward pleasures, and Dorian, tempted and tempting, a snarl of defiance and submission, with his tender hands and his biting tongue, might fit into more than a few of them. "If you want it to be."

That, at least, is simple.

Dorian sets his hand on Bull's face, on his cheek, and strokes a lingering line across it. No invitation, no tease in that gesture, only the slow sweep of fingers to signify something harder to say.

Then he kisses Bull, quiet and firm, like he's giving Bull permission to haunt him.

Bull thinks on that when Dorian goes, slipping half-dressed into the corridor and blowing out the lantern as he leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's one more chapter, but I've sworn to finish _House of Ash and Salt_ first, so I beg your patience, as usual. ♥


	5. The Night Market

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Add a corollary?" A subtle grin flashes Bull's teeth between his lips, but his face is open. "We both get one thing, and a taste of the other."
> 
> Dorian almost says, _You realise I know what you're doing, with the terrible flirting?_

In the morning after the ball, a palace servant wakes Dorian to tell him in crusty Orlesian that the Lady Inquisitor awaits Lord Pavus's presence in her guest suite. Dorian, who is nearing mutual first-name basis with the mentioned saviour of the imperial court, drags himself graciously from bed.

Of course it's ridiculous. The Inquisitor is the woman of the hour, exalted by Empress Celene and every last lordling, marquise and hanger-on in Halamshiral. She should break her fast in the garden with the great and the good of the empire instead of sequestering herself with her eclectic inner circle.

She's also Dalish, and worn past exhaustion by last night's machinations. He knows something of how she feels. The Great Game has familiar trappings to him, but he might as well be walking around with an array of enchanted lights spelling out _Tevinter_ above his head.

Thus, he's relieved to slip into her lavish quarters and mutter good mornings to Varric, who is half camouflaged by his seating choice in a red velvet armchair, to Vivienne, perched on a silk-cushioned settee, and Bull, taking up the foot of the bed, which more resembles a patchy cloud of pillows and quilts. To Dorian's surprise, Leliana shares the settee.

"Look who's up at last." Bull pats the bed. Dorian must still be bleary, because he takes the offered seat, kicks off his shoes and folds his ankles. His knee presses against Bull's thigh, and alarm snaps through him in the moment it takes him to remember there are no strangers here.

Once upon a time in his life, strangers were the safe choice. Closer acquaintance carried the two-edged blade of intimacy and having it turned against you. He lets himself sit still, and the warm span where their legs rest against each other, remains.

"Have mercy on the poor bastard." Varric pinches a slice of orange from a tray. Dorian accepts the empty plate Lavellan hands him and follows suit. "He's not that late. I'm not seeing head or hair of Curly, for one."

"Assuming Cullen ever made it to his own bed," Lavellan observes with rare dryness. "That one dowager was very persistent."

"Nah," Bull says. "Word had it he was spotted drilling in the old courtyard. Guess the word _spread_ since then, because I didn't see him when I went by."

Dorian hums a chuckle around a mouthful of fruit. The repast itself leaves nothing to be desired: proper coffee, two kinds of tea, artful mounds of grapes and bright pomegranate seeds, and steaming bread baked with nuts and rosemary. Too bad that it comes at the cost of a palace full of Orlesians.

"I'll have to take notes." Leliana cuts a piece of crumbly cheese for herself.

"Planning to use the commander's unexpected popularity as leverage?" Vivienne inquires with what Dorian worries might be approval.

"Perhaps." Leliana gives a perfect airy shrug. "There was something else I meant to mention. Since we came all this way, we must go to the Night Market."

Her stress affirms it as a proper name. When Lavellan makes a puzzled sound, Vivienne obliges her. "A quaint but long-time tradition. There is a market held every year, the next night after Her Majesty's ball. You might enjoy the old elven agora, my dear."

"I'm sure I would." It's too early for Dorian to discern if Lavellan sounds more civil or cordial. The balance between her and Vivienne continues precarious, but rooted in respect. They're all allies here.

"The agora is lovely, but it's hardly the point," Leliana says. "There are lights, and music, and stalls upon stalls of little wonders you never dreamed existed. In its way the market is a shadow of the Winter Ball. A celebration for all those who do not play the Game."

"Why, I never took you for a romantic, Nightingale." Varric laughs. "You're saying there's Orlesians who know how to have a party without worrying who can wear the biggest gems on their outfit and not rip a seam."

"What do you think?" Lavellan looks slantwise at Dorian. Last night, she thanked him for coming along. The two of them, Bull and Dorian himself, make a less obvious addition to her retinue for Halamshiral. He does understand her wish to have Bull's steadfast acumen at her back, but she isn't so blind to the currents of intrigue as not to grasp that Dorian's own presence is an asset and a hindrance in equal measure.

He sets down his coffee. "I suppose." Unthinking, he gives Bull a darting glance. They've been on their best behaviour, given the whole affair about foiling an imperial assassination, and the smaller matter of Josephine's nerves and Leliana's vengeance should anyone succeed in the heroic effort of ruining them.

Their best behaviour did allow for the fact that the dainty-legged dressing table in Dorian's room now teeters somewhat. Furthermore, it is a lucky thing that the hue of Bull's skin hides tooth marks well.

Staying on the quiet side is second nature. Sitting on a friend's bed, shored up against Bull in the clear light of morning--that is not.

"I'm good with it." Bull lifts one shoulder in a sweeping shrug. "Almost took the boys out there a few years back, but Stitches brought by an old friend who was in a bit of a jam, and--"

"And we'll be here all morning if you launch into _that_ yarn," Dorian intercepts him, unable to muffle a chortle. He's rather sure he knows the one, and Bull tends to season it until it needs three other stories told to make any sense. He tips his head at Varric. "Apologies. I'm sure you can squeeze the story out of him later, if you're lacking for inspiration."

Varric is scrutinising them, one brow quirked. "I've got some excellent imagery happening right here, Sparkler."

Vivienne sets her silver fork on her plate, an immaculate _plink_ of interruption. Dorian has to stop himself from tensing. Bull isn't looking at him, but a shift of his knee nudges Dorian's own. He lets out a held breath as casually as he can.

"One could assume the world can manage on its own for one night," he says. "We'll be back to trudging through some roadless wilderness soon enough. Why not take in the local colour while we can, such as it might be?"

*

" 'Local' colour, he said." Bull's cheerful drawl rolls like the fruit-shell rattles of the Antivan dancers, who spin and dart through the shadows of a torch-lit gallery at one end of the agora. The rest of the performers are hidden between the reliefed columns, so only the sounds of their pipes and drums undulate through the air. "Such as it is."

"You," Dorian says, pouring it into his tone that he just bit off a scorching epithet, "were waiting to say that."

"I was. And you made it worth the wait." The tail end of Bull's words slopes into a softer note. Dorian frowns, his mind momentarily scrabbling to measure the change, then works up a suitably irked sigh.

"It has been my privilege to amuse. Shall we, before the others leave us behind?"

He couldn't quite blame the rest of the company if his and Bull's two-copper argument wouldn't hold a candle to the lure of the market. Outside the city proper, a half-collapsed elven ruin has become a labyrinthine fairground, speckled with lights and wreathed in the smells of everything from roasting mutton and clouding incense to tiny firecrackers of Rivaini make, shot by two sandal-footed girls in silver-threaded kerchiefs. One goes off so close that Dorian's ears pop unpleasantly. Before he can level a complaint, an older woman with the same dusky skin as the girls' rushes out from a stall to chastise them.

"Let's, but it's a little late for that." Bull bends to Dorian's cleared ear. He glimpses the flutter of Vivienne's scarf, vanishing into the crowd. She forewent her mask, and all of them, all Inquisition insignia. _That is the point of the Night Market_ , Leliana said. _It has its own affiliations, like a Satinalia carnival._

Dorian wore his travel attire, then, and Bull can scarcely shed his horns, but he'll stand out whatever he does. The stalls and tents are arranged on a rough grid--some law governs even this wild sprawl--to leave paths for the market-goers. Josephine and Leliana linger by a table of local sweetmeats, spun-sugar candies under dim glass lids, baskets of sticky dates rolled in powdered almond, and airy guimauves. The tangle of traders and mummers, elven, dwarven and human, seems to spread on as far as the night is dark.

"Cruelly abandoned." Dorian shakes his head, not the slightest rue in his voice.

"Hey, now. I'm still here."

"That you are." Hastily he gestures towards the confectioner's stall. "I believe I've spotted something that may interest you."

Bull's rasp of laughter is affirmation enough. Josephine and Leliana slip away arm in arm, sharing bites of something chocolate. The selection, overseen by an apple-cheeked woman with the splash of an old burn on her forearm, would very nearly not be shamed by the markets of Minrathous itself.

"The question becomes, how does one choose from this plenty?" Dorian leans in. Thumb-sized lion figures cast from dark chocolate sit side by side with a shallow bowl of sugared roses and another of some local blossoms he doesn't even recognise.

"Take one of everything," Bull says sagely. "You'll pass out from the sweetness before you've walked a block's worth, but it'll be a good way to miss the rest."

"Surely you'd carry me back." Dorian doesn't quite grasp the phrase before it's out of his mouth.

"I would," Bull agrees, as if all blood hadn't just fled Dorian's face. Maker, what have they stuffed in those incenses drifting everywhere? Something to wreak havoc on his judgment, clearly. "Could prop you in one of those alcoves the musicians were using, then collect you on the way back."

There goes his mortification, swept clean away by indignity. "Well, that's all the gallantry I'd expect from--" Any number of half-hearted insults hover at the ready. They are his usual defensive repertoire, for when Bull slips closer than it'd be wise to let him. Dorian clear his throat instead. Looks at Bull and lets a hint of apology into his expression.

"How about this?" He sweeps an open hand at the alley they're in, crammed with tents and tables. "In the interest of keeping pace, we're allowed to take one thing from each stall."

Bull seems to mull over his suggestion, but the way his eye cinches answers Dorian's wordless _I am sorry_ before he speaks. "You think we can agree on what to pick?"

"Perhaps." Dorian spares a longing glance at the almond-dusted dates. When was the last time he even saw a fresh date fruit? "It's been known to happen."

"Add a corollary?" A subtle grin flashes Bull's teeth between his lips, but his face is open. "We both get one thing, and a taste of the other."

Dorian almost says, _You realise I know what you're doing, with the terrible flirting?_ He's restrained by sudden, whisper-light understanding.

"All right," he hums then. "That sounds a comfortable compromise."

Long ago, he used to get in trouble for stealing into the palm orchards by his aunt's estate and climbing, with a child's scrambling grace, up to the ripening clusters of dates to eat them straight out of the tree. The ones the confectioner sells to him are rich and soft, the dark amber pulp parting thickly in his teeth.

"Hush," he says to Bull. "I may need a moment here."

"No hurry." They ducked around the table and into a narrow space beside a broken column, where they aren't blocking anyone's way. "Though you should see your face."

Dorian is damned if he can read Bull's tone. Too great a part of his mind may be preoccupied with the lingering sweetness. "I should? Is there..." Something tickles his lip, and he makes to tug it off with his teeth when Bull leans closer.

They have no room to stand apart. Dorian was rather fine with his shoulder resting against Bull's arm, bent over his prize of dates.

"Yeah." Bull halts, his breath warm on Dorian's brow. "Like you forgot you're not supposed to be content."

"That's a convoluted way of putting it," he mumbles.

"Exactly what you looked like, though."

A pause; a hesitation. Old, smothered fear kicks in his gut. There's a hand's width between their faces and an uninterrupted flow of people two steps away.

"Damn it," Dorian hisses, clasps Bull's shoulder, and kisses him. It starts out careless and insistent, his breath caught between his teeth, like he cut himself off midway. Bull lets Dorian have that, only curls his fingers over Dorian's grasping hand and slants his mouth more firmly over Dorian's.

In the back of his mind his thoughts seize and clench, like he's been caught at mischief. Like one of the people strolling by might stop and stare and let loose a hue and cry.

The market carries on in the patter of feet and the trill of instruments, in the crooning voices of hawkers and the merry haggling of their customers. _The Night Market has its own affiliations._ The kiss eases and mellows, until it's a last warm nudge, Bull's closed mouth pressed to his, and then over.

They both breathe a touch fast, and as Dorian drops his hand, Bull's follows, their fingers still together.

"I think," Dorian says, "that I'd like to forget for a little longer."

Bull straightens his head, cracks his neck. His eye glimmers. "And I think you owe me a date."

"All in good time." Dorian feels his feet lighter, his thoughts striving and circling like a seabird with the ocean wind under its wings. "We might, tonight, make only as much haste as we must."

He doesn't release Bull's hand as they turn to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Festina lente_ (Lat.), 'make haste slowly', or, to move at the right pace for the task.
> 
> *
> 
> Bless Joan for being the best first reader and the most patient of writing company.
> 
> Comments are adored!


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